No Sew, No Problem.....

So after a great friend had passed on this pattern for a no-sew fleece hat, I knew I had to try it out. I know that I will not have any use for this here in Bahrain, but thought it would be a good time to practice while I have some extra fleece laying around. So here is the finished product and the steps that went into making it:



Here is the finished product...A cute little pom-pom fleece hat!



Materials Needed:

• Fleece
• Good Scissors

How to Make the Hat:

1. Cut a piece of fleece that measures roughly 14 inches(or longer if you wish)high with a length that equals the circumference of the recipient's head plus 2 inches for the fringe and another 1-2 inches for comfort factor. The knots will make this a little more snug after they are all tied so you want to make sure you have quite a bit of extra room.
2. I used a rotary cutter and mat for my project, but you could definitely do this next step with just scissors. I layed the fleece fabric flat on the mat and used a straight edge(in the form of a rotary cutter ruler) to measure the strip cuts(which are 3 inches deep)every 3/4 of an inch. You can definitely eyeball these cuts, but make sure that your cuts are the same size on both sides of the fabric as they will not line up correctly if they are off.
3. Bring the two sides together with the outside of the fabric on the outside(or on the inside if you would rather the ties go inside the hat instead of out) and tie the strips(that you cut in step 2)to eachother.
4. Fold the bottom of the hat up twice to make the brim of the hat. Note: I had a little problem with mine staying up all the way so you might want to use a safety pin to hold these folds in place while you are finishing up the hat.
5. Decide on the height you would like the hat to be and gather the fabric tightly using a ribbon(or a hairtie if you would like to keep the fabric al bunched up while you finish the hat all up). I found it was best to put the hat on at this step and look in a mirror to see where the hat actually hit my head correctly so that I would not have a huge amount of pom-pom on top and no ties showing.
6. Undo any of the knots that fall above this bunched line. I kept the one directly above the bunching there just to help mark the spot. You will want to cut all the extra fringe off of the ties that you untied at this point as you do not want some extremely extra long pom-pom strips.
7. Make vertical cuts in the bunched fabric at the top of the hat. These do not have to be even at all, just eyeball it. These cuts will create the pom-pom effect that you can see in the above picture.Trim any of these that may be too long, again, just because you don't want any abnormally long strips hanging out.
8. And voila, you are done. You may want to tie a bow out of ribbon or an extra thing piece of fleece where you bunched the fabric just to finish it off.

Below you will see the pictures I took of some of the steps as I was making this hat last night.....

This is the cutting stage of Step 2!

This is the end of Step 2! See how all the strips are cut?

This is after the tying of the knots...

And this is after using a hairtie to bunch the fabric at the top!


Of course, if you want to see the finished product again, all you have to do is scroll to the top of this post and look at the main picture right there! I hope that this post will inspire some of you to make your own version of this hat!